


The Heart of Voltron

by wecara



Series: Langst Prompts [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Kidnapping, Langst, M/M, Prompt Fic, Sharing a Bed, keith is small boy, klance, lance is sad boy, small sad boys in a healthy loving relationship based around mutual comfort and support, together they form
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-06-12 18:19:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15345741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wecara/pseuds/wecara
Summary: Allura is in danger, and amidst the flurry to keep their princess safe, a certain Blue Paladin realizes how unwanted he really is.Part 2 of my Langst Prompts series :)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, Part 2! and this one will have two chapters. Look at me, making so much content in such a short amount of time. Don't get used to it ;) It's summer vacation, so once I start classes up again it'll get harder to post. Sorry!  
> if you want your prompt/idea written, head on over to my Ko-fi and buy me a coffee!!  
> Much love and happy reading!  
> https://ko-fi.com/wecara

It was supposed to be a lighthearted celebration of the coalition’s newest ally, planet Sh’kiv. They were dressed in traditional Sh’kivian garb, consisting of loose, gauzy fabrics draped over their bodies that fluttered through the air whenever they moved. The material had an almost weightless way of moving, defying all known laws of gravity with the way it remained lazily suspended wherever Keith guided it. 

Each of them had been assigned colors based off of their Lions, so Keith’s was a fiery, shimmering red. It looked like fire licking around his body, especially with the jagged cuts placed randomly across the fabrics, creating tendrils that tapered off into flamelike points. To keep the floaty cloth from slipping off of his body entirely, the Sh’kivians had fastened an elaborately woven belt around his waist that was threaded with sparkling golden string. At least, he  _ hoped  _ it was string and not real gold, but giving the ornateness of his attire, he wouldn’t put it past the aliens. He just hoped he wouldn’t somehow lose or damage it. 

Pidge looked like a pixie, her outfit had been cut to allow the fabric to fly behind her in spring green swirls, looking like vines that curled around the air wherever she moved. Her hair had been woven into an elaborate braid that twisted around her head, pieces of the fabric entwined in her auburn hair and falling away in delicate corkscrews. Whenever she turned her head, they spun in lazy circles, framing her face. 

Hunk’s outfit made the bulky Samoan look like a beautiful bird, the fabric cut into circular disks, overlapping into a train that fell behind him and seemed to linger behind for just a second longer than what should be physically possible whenever he walked. The circles of fabric framed his chest and arms, and Keith noticed for the first time how muscular he was. All that bulk was actually toned brute force, allowing him to have olympic levels of strength. 

The black of Shiro’s attire was so thick it seemed to swallow any light that fell upon it. The fabric looked like smoke swirling around him, liquid shadow dripping from his form. He looked almost intimidating, like a grim reaper, but his kind smile and contagious laugh scared all thoughts of danger away.

Allura’s pink attire matched in style the orange of Coran’s, with longer, flatter pieces of fabric stretching behind them to look like wings. Thanks to the gravity-defying nature of the fabric, the wings remained suspended in the air, flapping gently with each step the Alteans took. It was clear that the Sh’kivians saw Alteans as angels from heaven, and had taken to bowing politely whenever they passed the pair. Allura didn’t want to be idolized, she’d already been called the Cat Goddess back on Arus and the Sacrificial Flame Incident had been the first indication that she, as the Princess of Altea, was in for some trouble. Still, whatever it was, if it appeased her allies, she was willing to do it. They had a war to win. 

In Keith’s opinion, Lance’s outfit looked the best on him. As incredible as each of the other Paladins looked in each of their outfits, Lance’s was the most complementary and his confidence took it to new levels of gorgeous. As the Blue Paladin, his robe was built to look like water swirling around him. It was long, pooling around his ankles and the floor around him like a ballgown. The pieces around his torso could be tossed gently into the air ten feet above him before fluttering back down again, a rippling waterfall. He also had a veil that he lifted frequently to speak to others, but as it fell back down it caught imaginary fluffs of air that caused it to twist and curl around his neck and shoulders like drops of water coursing down his body. When he walked the water swirled around him like he was parting the seas, the gauzy fabrics playing around his feet like fish weaving through the current.

He was breathtaking. 

Keith mingled well enough with the Sh’kivians, they were tall and willowy humanoids with skin so black it looked like shadow. They used some sort of colored shimmery powder to dust their cheekbones, noses, hands, collarbones, and other parts of their bodies so you could make out their features, and the highlighted parts matched their delicate outfits. They were a beautiful species, Keith could give them that. Even if the endless darkness in their eyes caught him a little off guard when he looked at them for too long. 

After about an hour of festivities, Lance made his way over to Keith, his apparel gently licking across the white tile of the ballroom. Keith wondered how no one had stepped on it and ripped it. 

“Keith, you look amazing!” Lance gushed, throwing his arm around Keith’s shoulder. The blue fabric of his veil settled around both their heads, the fabric of their skirts mingling into a gorgeous orchid wherever they touched. With the light, overlapping quality of the fabrics, it was beginning to make them look like one singular purple unit. 

_ Me? Have you even seen yourself?!  _ Keith thought, but instead muttered out a flustered “Uh, Thanks. You too.” Lance beamed.

“Isn’t this stuff just  _ amazing _ ?” he said, dragging his long brown fingers through the fabric at his torso before giving it a gentle nudge towards the ceiling. It floated lazily up for a few seconds before dripping back down to its original place framing Lance’s lean arm. Keith watched the movement, entranced, before nodding.

“Yeah. Have you seen Pidge? I still can’t figure out how the fabric is doing that corkscrew thing,” Keith responded. Lance grinned and tilted his head back, causing the veil around their heads to drop down to Keith’s shoulders, falling across the arm Lance has wrapped securely around him. 

“Oh my god, right? These Sh’kivians are seriously incredible. I’m kinda sad we don’t get to keep these. I’d never take mine off.” 

Keith was about to make a joke about Lance being a fluttery butterfly in the thick of battle when suddenly the lights in the ballroom flickered, then went off completely. A wave of startled gasps filled the room, and the screen at the far end of the ballroom suddenly flooded the room with a deep red light. 

The screen featured a Sh’kivian with flickering blood red robes curling around them in a sinister sort of motion, the material looked less gauzy and elegant and more restricting and angry. The alien wore a matching red mask that was smooth as a platter, no holes or dips for a mouth or eyes. Suddenly the Sh’kivians gasped and muttered fearfully, backing away from the screen. Keith’s eyes darted across the room, and he picked up the sound of a Sh’kivian near them whispering “The Dak’ruutha.”

Lance’s head swiveled towards Keith’s, his arm tightening around his shoulder. In the red light from the screen, his face looked more angular and sharp than usual, a stark difference from the smooth tranquility of his previous countenance. 

“Did you hear that?” he hissed, and Keith nodded.

“The Dak’ruutha. Do you think that’s some sort of criminal group here?” he asked. Lance’s mouth pressed into a firm line.

“Sounds like it. We should—”

He was cut off by a deep, garbled voice filling the ballroom’s speaker systems, the voice so deep it almost hurts Keith’s ears. 

“Paladins of Voltron,” the figure on the screen said. “I am Dak’ruutha, this planet’s reigning king of the poor Sh’kivians deemed too dirty to be in the presence of our wealthy counterparts. While you were busy celebrating a beautiful bond with these pompous fools, we have been arranging to destroy them.”

Keith’s eyes darted around to the corners of the rooms, searching for any figures lurking in the shadows, but all the people he could see were huddled towards the back, away from the screen, blatant fear on their faces. His fellow Paladins were standing in defensive poses, scattered across the room now that the Sh’kivians have retreated from their presence. 

“Once we destroy you, they will be defenseless against the Galra. And once they attack, these complacent scobberlotchers will be decimated and we will rise from their ashes, finally free to take back what they have stolen through endless taxing and robbing. We will be your servants no longer!” At the last phrase, Dak’ruutha pounded a fist into the wall beside him, causing a loud boom to echo through the speakers. A faint sound of sobbing sounded from behind Keith, and he turned to see the Sh’kivians huddled even closer together than before, many of them crying fearfully. He turned back to the screen, renewed anger in his heart. This Dak’ruutha can threaten to overthrow the government all he wants, but if he messes with Keith’s family, he’s gonna have another thing coming. 

Dak’ruutha leaned in towards the camera, the eerily smooth mask looking more imposing the closer it got. “How will we destroy Voltron? Well, Paladins, we know you cannot function without your precious heart. We are coming, Princess Allura. We are already here. You cannot escape. I hope you are ready, because by the time the clock hits midnight the Heart of Voltron will be ours.” His voice was low, a gravelly whisper amplified through the speakers that surrounded all sides of the ballroom. Keith felt Lance stiffen beside him, his fist clenching in the fabric around Keith’s shoulder. 

At this, the screen shut off, the lights flickered back on, and all was still. 

The ballroom was like one big bated breath, before suddenly all hell broke loose. 

The still Sh’kivians started to scream, scrambling towards the exits in a chaotic swarm. 

Lance ripped away from Keith’s side and rushed over to Allura, grabbing her arm and pulling her towards the center of the ballroom where Pidge, Hunk, and Shiro stood. 

“Come on, Princess. We need to find a way to keep that Dak’ruutha away from you,” he said, and Allura allowed herself to be dragged into the center of the five of them. Keith rushed over to the Paladins, and their all stood with their backs to Allura and Coran, who had rushed in to stand by her side.

“Alright, team. We need a plan of action. Here we’re just sitting ducks,” Shiro barked, and Keith nodded and summoned his bayard from under his robe. He turned and saw that each of his teammates had done the same.

“Would it be safer to try to get her to one of the Lions and then back to the ship? I have a feeling that they must’ve already gotten to them, Dak’ruutha said that they’re already here and it sounded like there’s a lot of them,” Pidge said, her honey colored eyes darted back and forth across the expanse of the ballroom, which was almost entirely empty. 

“We passed a room during the tour that was a sort of observation deck, remember? It had all those big windows, and I could see Yellow from there. It was out of the way from the main chambers, so it’ll be a relatively safe place to plan our next move.” Hunk said, and Shiro nodded.

“Sounds great, Hunk. Lead the way. Paladins, stay in formation. Pidge and I will flank Hunk, Lance and Keith, take up the rear behind Allura and Coran. Stay sharp, and don’t hesitate to engage at the first sign of trouble. Whatever you do, keep anyone and everything away from the Princess.” Shiro barked.

“Got it,” the team responded, then fell into the formation Shiro explained. They exited the ballroom at the right door, which was least crowded by terrified Sh’kivians. Hunk guided them through a narrow passageway and the noise of the alien chatter quickly fell away as it became apparently obvious that they were getting further and further away from any main rooms. 

Lance was tense and on high alert. This was the first time an alien planet they aligned with had turned out to be hostile, and this was also the first time anyone had directly targeted Allura rather than Voltron as a whole. He was not ready to lose any of his team members, especially after all they’ve been through together. 

Allura is their heart, she commands them through the Castle Ship and gives guidance and counsel and constant kindness. Well, maybe that’s more of a brain, but whatever. Point is, she’s just as important to the team as any one of the Paladins, and Lance will  _ not  _ lose her. 

They finally reached the observatory Hunk had described, and they stepped into the room slowly, bayards raised as Shiro stepped ahead and scouted the rest of the room. 

“All clear,” he announced, and the rest of the team followed after him, Pidge locked the door securely with some quick alien override codes. The observatory was gigantic, with smooth glass windows that made up the entirety of the domed ceiling that stretched down to the floor. The floors were a creamy lilac color, and they made a soft padding sound as they stepped inside, as if they weren’t entirely made of metal or plastic but something in between. Much of the Sh’kivian castle was composed of a similar material, each room was a different color with the hallways being a blinding white. Lance was amazed that they never seemed to get dirty. 

“Hey, Hunk, what do you think—”

“Hang on a sec, Lance—there!” Hunk pointed out a spot in the distance, just past the castle boundaries. The team crowded around him, and Keith felt his heart sink to his stomach at the sight.

Their Lions were completely surrounded by a red force field, it looked to be made up of millions of small points of light. Standing around the force field was hundreds, maybe thousands of Sh’kivians dressed similarly to Dak’ruutha, with the blood red fabric and matching unblemished masks. 

“Okay, so getting to our Lions is out. Any ideas?” Shiro asked, turning away from the glass window with his hand stroking his chin thoughtfully. 

“That Dak’ruutha guy said—”

“That name is so hard to say. Can we just give him a nickname? Like uh…  _ Devilman.  _ Hey, I like that!” Lance cut Keith off, and the rest of the team looked at him with unamused glares.

“Not now, Lance. This is serious. What were you saying, Keith?” Shiro said, and Lance wilted a little. He was only trying to lighten the mood!

“Oh, right. Dak’ruutha said that they’d have Allura by midnight. What time is it now?” Keith said, and Hunk pulled a device from the folds of his robes.

“Well, night time on Sh’kiv is about four vargas shorter than night on Earth, and assuming that midnight means the  _ middle  _ of the  _ night,  _ then we’re about two and a half vargas in, so we have about a varga and a half before midnight. But that’s just my guess, time could be completely different here, I don’t know.” Hunk said, counting on his fingers as he spoke.

“Thanks for the approximation, Hunk. That’s great. Okay, so an hour and a half to keep the resistance group away from Allura. That shouldn’t be so bad, right?” Shiro asked, and the team nodded. 

“We need to get somewhere more secure. That locking sequence is great, Pidge, but I don’t feel comfortable with the princess’s only protection being a glass dome,” said Coran, so they exited the observatory in their previous formation and made their way into a smaller, blue colored room with a single window looking out towards their Lions so they could keep an eye on the enemy while remaining relatively hidden. 

“Hunk, what’s our time?” Shiro asked.

“We’ve got a varga and fifteen dobashes to go,” Hunk responded. 

“Okay, this seems like a good place to camp out. We’ll take turns standing watch outside the door, and if anything happens, two of us will evacuate the princess through the window. The others will stay and fight off the Sh’kivians then follow the two with Allura when they can. Got it?” Shiro asked. The team gave their affirmations, and the plan was in action. 

The first thirty dobashes passed in anxious silence. Keith and Hunk were given first watch , with Lance and Pidge in charge of evacuation and Shiro as a standby fighter to help the two standing watch should they encounter some resistance. Every time Lance would try to say something to lighten the mood, someone would shush him up and tell him that now isn’t the time to joke around.

Lance begged to differ. He thought now of all times would be a good one to joke around, so they weren’t just constantly terrified and paranoid. He was confident in his team’s abilities to protect Allura, so he wasn’t worried about them being caught off guard. Still, after a while, he learned to just shut up and stay out of everyone else’s way.

Shiro and Pidge stepped up to take the next watch, with Keith and Lance on evacuation duty and Hunk as the standby. The Green and Black Paladins had been talking in hushed voices all during the first watch, and they continued to talk strategy as the doors closed. From what Lance could understand, Pidge was devising a way to dismantle the force field around their Lions. She thought that if she could get to the ship that the resistance fighters were using—a battered, black, angry looking thing that was parked right next to the force field—she could get into the control room and override the field. 

It wasn’t long before the sound of shouting filled the hall, and Pidge shouted through the comms, “Take Allura and go! They found us—agh!” 

Springing into action, Lance grabbed Allura’s right and Keith wrapped his arms around her left, and they leaped out onto the roof outside the room. 

“Hunk, what’s going on, buddy?” Lance said through the comms. 

“Lance I can’t talk right now—ugh!—I’m sort of fighting—get off of me!—some vicious aliens!” Hunk’s voice crackled through the comms.

“Lance, just do your job. We’ll be with you in a sec,” said Shiro, and Lance pursed his lips into a thin line. Alright, so he was just being a bother to them even when he wanted to help. Well, he would shut up and do his job. That was fine. In fact, in order to keep the mission and Allura safe, Lance vowed to not say a word until she was back safe on the Castle of Lions. 

They sprinted along the roof in silence, holding Allura steady in case she fell. It didn’t take long for her to swat their hands away angrily.

“Alright, Paladins, enough of that. I know that they targeted me, but that doesn’t make me a damsel in distress. I’m more than capable of running along a roof.” she said, so Lance and Keith reluctantly drew their hands away, instead assuming defensive positions so they could be ready for a surprise attack. 

They made it down the Sh’kivian castle’s roof without incident, leaping down from a dip in the roof to a bridge connecting two towers so that they didn’t have to jump from too high up. Still, the impact stung Lance’s legs, and he clamped his mouth shut before he could complain. 

“Shiro, what’s your status?” Keith barked through the comms. 

“We took them out, but we think more are on the way. Pidge thinks she can dismantle the force field if we get her onto that black ship beside the Lions, so we’re gonna do that. Headed your way, stay alert.” Shiro’s voice filled Lance’s ears before the comms crackled out.

“Roger that,” Keith responded, then turned back to the princess and explained the situation. 

“Alright, let’s get out of plain sight,” Allura said, and retreated to a raised portion of the bridge before ducking down, effectively hidden from view on both sides. Lance and Keith followed, and before long the telltale  _ thunk  _ of Pidge, Shiro, Coran, and Hunk landing on the bridge in front of them sounded, and they got up to meet them.

Their clothes were slightly tattered and torn, but the gauzy ethereality of the fabric still remained, so they merely looked like they’d taken a leisurely stroll through a rose garden and their clothes had been caught on a thorn or two rather than been in a fight with violent alien resistance. 

“Alright guys, here’s the plan. We have thirty two dobashes before Dak’ruutha said he’d come for Allura, but they aren't just gonna give up and leave if midnight passes and they still don’t have her. The only way to protect her is to get her back to the castle ship and wormhole out of here.” Pidge pulls a tiny device from the folds of her swirling skirt and starts poking around on it, summoning a map of the castle.

“I’ve been scanning the castle for heat signatures, and it looks like there’s a lot of them along the main corridors with only a few guards scattered around the servant’s halls. If we take those down to the side exit here,” she points at an opening on the map, “then we can take this foot path down right behind the ship. They’re expecting us from the main and back exits, because those are the most direct paths out from the ballroom. It should be a piece of cake. I just need to plug this override into the force field’s system, then set this lock over the whole control system so that it’ll take them a while to get their ship running. Hopefully, by the time they’re starting their engines, we’ll be long gone.”

“Alright, so we’ll remain in formation, except this time Pidge will take the lead because she’s got the maps. Hunk, you take her place.” Shiro said.

“Right,” Hunk responded. 

“Once we get out, I’ll follow Pidge in to set up the force field override. The rest of you stay hidden until the second the force field goes out. We’ll likely only have a few minutes at best while they’re distracted, so get to your lions as fast as you can. Allura is top priority, so she goes in the closest Lion to your location. Coran, you’ll go with her, and if you think you can’t get to your own Lion before you’re apprehended, just jump in with someone else. These people aren't the Galra, so they don’t covet the Lions like Zarkon does. If it means coming back for them once Allura is safe, so be it. We’ll get them back. Understood?” Shiro finished.

“Got it!” the team shouted in unison.

“Perfect. Let’s head out!” 

They raced down servant’s corridors, pausing when Pidge held up a fist, indicating that guards were passing by and they needed to be silent before returning to their brisk pace. This happened a couple times, and as they wove through the narrow halls, Lance started to feel his head spin. He didn’t have any idea of where they were relative to the ballroom, their Lions, anything. All he could do was trust in Pidge and protect Allura at all costs. 

Surprisingly, they reached the side exit without any resistance. There had been a couple close calls, but it was overall smooth sailing. Pidge opened the door with a smooth  _ whoosh,  _ and they were out into the cool Sh’kivian air. A dirt path wound down from the small side door, with divots in the earth from carts that carried supplies up to the servant’s corridors. Tufts of blue grass pushed up from cracks in the tan dirt, and glowing flowers that looked like baby’s breath grew sporadically across the plains. It would have been beautiful if they weren’t trying to stay hidden, their heart’s life at stake. 

They wandered down the path in silence, scuttling awkwardly down steep declines all while trying to stay as covert as possible. As the force field came into view, Keith got his first good look at the scene.

About fifty of the resistance members were left, the rest obviously roaming the castle. He hoped they would stay there, still thinking that the Paladins were inside, giving them more time, but he couldn’t afford to let his guard down for a second. They were holding long, slender red instruments with a trigger and a barrel, so Keith assumed they were some sort of alien firearm. 

“There, look, they’re not even looking at the back of the ship,” Pidge hissed, pointing at an entrance to the bulky black mass of metal. 

“We’re heading in. Remember, be as fast as possible. Good luck Paladins,” Shiro said, then he and Pidge leaped to their feet and started running in silence towards the ship. 

The other Paladins watched, holding their breath, as they reached the back entrance and Shiro boosted Pidge up, pulling himself in shortly after. The minutes they spent crouching in the grass as a light breeze rustled through their gauzy fabrics felt like hours. Keith knew that no news was good news, as long as there was silence and stillness from the ship then his teammates were going undetected through the enemy lines. Still, he couldn’t help but think about where— 

“Now!” Hunk hissed violently, pointing to the force field that has just flickered out into nothingness. Keith was to his feet in a flash, Pulling Allura up and sprinting down around the back of the ship towards the nearest lion, his own. 

“What the—there!” came a shout from one of the masked Sh’kivians, and suddenly the air was being filled by brilliant red bullets, thinner than the Galran and Paladin’s lasers, but probably no less deadly. 

“Grab the heart! Get the heart!” Another one shouted, and Keith tightened his grip around Allura’s arm, pulling her behind the protection of his body. 

“Come on guys, get in Red! There’s no time—” Keith’s command was cut short by a cry and he turned to see Hunk, who was protecting Coran with his body, clutching his arm. Blood was seeping from the wound, and Keith’s vision went red with rage. 

Once he reached Red, she opened her jaws immediately for him to usher Allura inside, followed closely by Hunk and Coran, and then the rest of his team. The moment the jaws started to close, the shots suddenly stopped coming. 

_ Ha, giving up so easily?  _ Keith thought smugly. Then he threw himself into Red’s cockpit and started pulling away. Red sounded panicked through their bond, saying something about leaving someone behind.

_ Don’t worry girl, we’ll get them back,  _ Keith tried to soothe, but Red did not stop with the anxious waves rolling through their mental link. He looked down at the other Lions, still parked at attention underneath the force field that went up again. 

Red was fast, so they were out of the Sh’kivian atmosphere in the blink of an eye. By the time one dobashes passed, the planet was as small as a star, melting into the rest of the vast expanse of space. The resistance showed no sign of following. 

“Alright guys, I think we’re in the clear,” Keith announced, and his teammates started to cheer. It was cramped in the cockpit, but they were safe and that was all that mattered. “Red is mad that we’re leaving the lions, but we’ll get them back, right?” 

Shiro nodded and patted the wall of the cockpit kindly.

“Yeah, don’t worry. I’m sure we can get them back just fine. Let’s hurry back to the Castle and make sure Allura is safe, first.”

“Honestly, you didn’t have to baby me so much. I can fend for myself, you know,” Allura said, shaking her head. Coran sighed.

“Yes, Princess, we know. It was just scary having one of our team members specifically threatened. Usually, it’s the Galra coming for all of us, so we’re all in the fight together. This time was different, and it scared us.” The ginger man said this while twirling his mustache anxiously. Allura nodded and put her hand over Pidge’s bouncing knee.

“Yes, don’t get me wrong, I was scared too. I’m just glad we’re all safe.” 

They landed on the Castle of Lions quickly, and Coran wasted no time ushering Allura back to her chambers to get some rest where he knew she would be safe. Allura first insisted on plotting a course off to some further reach of the galaxy so that they knew they would be far away from Sh’kiv, and none of the team members seemed to complain. 

Allura stepped up to the control panel, placing her hands over the controls that rose up from the ground. 

“Alright, Paladins, where—”

Suddenly, a screen similar to the one broadcasted at the ballroom filled the control room monitors, and Dak’ruutha’s sinister smooth mask was staring at them once more. 

“How did he—?” Keith asked angrily, leaping to his feet. How did he get onto the Castle’s controls? He hoped it was just a broadcasted message that could somehow reach them, but he couldn’t be certain. 

“You surprise me, Paladins of Voltron. I thought you would put up a better fight,” his deep voice filled the room, and Keith growled. 

“A better fight?! We kicked your ass!” He shouted, and Pidge came up next to him.

“Yeah, you’re never getting the princess!” she cried, holding her bayard up intimidatingly and pointing it towards the screen. Dak’ruutha seemed to take pause at this, tilting his masked head slightly.

“Princess? What would we want with your princess?” he asked. “We said we were taking your Heart.”

“Yeah, and you’ll never have her!” Pidge shouted, stepping closer. Keith nodded emphatically. 

Dak’ruutha was still for a very long time, the silence stretched into nearly uncomfortable. Keith’s hands clenched into fists in anticipation.

Suddenly the control room was filled with deep, barking laughter. Keith flinched at the sound, eyes narrowing as Dak’ruutha’s shoulders shook viciously with every sinister cackle. 

“Do you fools not know your own heart?!” He shouted suddenly, then continued laughing. “Your expressions tell me this is true! Oh, if only I hadn’t messaged you, I would have liked to see how long it took for you to realize!”

“Realize what, mask face?” Hunk said angrily. This guy was seriously starting to get on everyone’s nerves, and he just kept on laughing. Finally the cackles came to a close and he reached a charcoal black hand underneath the mask as if he was wiping away a tear. 

“Realize that you did not protect your heart. We already have him.” Dak’ruutha’s voice was low, bitter, and extremely smug. Keith stiffened, a million angry questions on the tip of his tongue, but the screen disappeared and they were left staring out through the control room windows and into space. 

“What did he mean, he already…?” Keith turned to face the rest of the crew, all of them looked equally as perplexed, except for Hunk.

Hunk looked horrified.

“Hunk, what’s—”

“Where’s Lance?” Hunk asked in a quiet voice. 

It was like someone poured a bucket of ice water down his back. Keith’s eyes darted across the faces of all of his crew members, but sure enough, one was missing. One in elegant blue robes that twirled around him as he walked, one that was always smiling and cracking jokes, bringing light when the team was at their lowest. One that never let a day go by without complimenting one of them. One that was always there to listen when they needed to vent, one that supported them in ways they’d never realized before.

They were missing their heart.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dak'ruutha's plan is bringing Lance a lot of pain, the Paladins' lack of a plan is bringing Keith a lot of anxiety.  
> Gore warning, not too much graphic violence, but a bit of blood :(

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The long awaited second installment is here! thank you for all your love, support, and patience as I worked to finish this, I hope it doesn't disappoint. GOD is it a long one, twice the length of the first chapter! Love you!!  
> Support me on Ko-fi!  
> https://ko-fi.com/wecara

A loud, sobbing gasp tore from Allura as she stepped away from the control panel like she’d been burned. She brought her hands over her mouth, turning to the rest of the crew with tears streaming down her face. 

“He came back with us, Lance, he was in Red with the rest of us, right?!” she asked hysterically, pacing back and forth across the control panel’s raised dais, but her hands were trembling. She already knew the answer. 

“We have to go back,” Pidge said desperately, running up to Allura on the control panel. “Allura, plot a course back to Sh’kiv, we have to go back!” Allura nodded and reached out for the two raised controls with shaking hands, but Shiro spoke up.

“No, wait, they’re expecting us now. They know that—” he seemed to choke on his next words, but spat them out anyways after a second, “they know that we forgot him. We need to plot a course of action, we can’t just run in guns blazing. We only have one Lion.” 

Pidge let out a horrified moaning sound and buried her face in her hands. “We forgot him, I can’t believe we forgot him,” she cried. Hunk hadn’t said a word since inquiring of the whereabouts of their Blue Paladin. 

“They were never going to kidnap me, they were going for Lance the whole time,” Allura said, her fingers digging into her cheeks, her palms clasped over her mouth muffling her words. “How could we have been this  _ stupid _ ?! When Dak’ruutha directly addressed me he was speaking to me as team Voltron’s  _ leader.  _ That was a warning for me, not a threat!”

“It’s my fault,” Hunk whispered under his breath, so quietly and brokenly that no one heard except Keith. “Oh god, this is my fault,” he said again, and Keith turned around to face the Samoan. He’d folded in on himself, the guilt and horror making him seem even smaller than Pidge.

“What do you mean?” Keith hissed. Hunk just flinched smaller.

“He tried to talk to me a couple times, but I told him to stay quiet—I always—after a while he just stopped talking entirely. And then—then we didn’t—did he even shout out for help?”

Keith’s heart sank. It sank because he remembered muttering things like “shut up, Lance” or “not the time,” whenever he’d tried to make a joke or ask a question. It sank because he realized that yeah, after a while, Lance seemed to fade out entirely. It sank because he didn’t even know when the Blue Paladin was taken, it could have been anytime after the bridge. It sank because he didn’t think that Lance said anything, it sank because as much as he wanted to hope so, he wasn’t sure that he would have even heard if Lance actually cried out for help.

“I don’t know, Hunk. But we all—” Keith took a shuddering breath at the truth of his statement, “we all shut him down during that mission. Even Shiro told him to stop talking a couple times, don’t feel guilty just because—”

“That shouldn’t be a problem!” Hunk said loudly, loud enough for the rest of the frenzied team to hear. “He shouldn’t have to be constantly blabbering in our ears in order for us to fucking remember to take him home from an alien planet!” Keith flinched, but he couldn’t argue. It was true, and as much as he hated the idea, he’s pretty sure that if any of the others had fallen behind or been targeted by the resistance, they would have made sure to adjust their pace to accommodate them. 

Fuck, that hurts. Keith had never hated himself more than he did in that moment. Lance didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve to be forgotten. 

“I’m gonna go to the medbay and stitch this up,” the Samoan muttered, indicating the bullet wound on his shoulder. Allura had barely opened her mouth to tell one of them to go with him when Hunk held up his hand. “I’ll go alone. I don’t want to talk to anyone right now.” The unspoken  _ ‘except Lance’  _ hung in the air, thick like jelly. Then he stumbled out the door and was gone. 

“Shiro, we have to get him back,” Pidge begged in the resulting silence, grabbing Shiro’s left arm and looking up at him, tears blurring her vision. She looked more like a child than Keith had ever seen her. “I can’t lose another brother,” she sobbed. 

That was Shiro’s breaking point. Looking down at the girl whose family had been completely taken away from her—in part if not entirely by Shiro’s doing at one point or another—begging for a brother that Shiro had neglected. First he flew her brother and father into the clutches of an evil alien race, then he inadvertently ripped her away from her mother down on Earth, and now he had failed as a team leader and taken another member of her family away. 

His face contorted into a broken, crumpled version of itself, and he let out a shuddering breath before raking it back in, back and forth back and forth, and he realized he was dissolving into a panic. His hand had tightened around Pidge’s smaller ones in the process, and her small cry of pain snapped him back to reality. He couldn’t afford to panic, he couldn’t afford to curl up in a ball and cover his ears and wait until it all went away. He had a team to lead and a precious member of said team to recover.

“We  _ won’t  _ lose him,” he said violently, squeezing on Pidge’s fingers to emphasize his words. “Coran, see if we can’t open up communications with Dak’ruutha again. Maybe if we find out what he wants we can arrange for a trade of some sorts.”

“I don’t want to  _ trade  _ like Lance is just some  _ object,  _ I want to get in there and  _ fight _ ,” Keith spat, clenching his fists so hard he could feel his fingernails cutting crescents into his palms. 

“Keith, we’re severely outnumbered. If we just try to rush in, we could sacrifice Lance’s life. If they realize they’re under attack, they can use him as leverage to get us to surrender, and then we’ll be no better off than Lance,” Shiro explained cooly. Keith snarled in frustration, knowing that Shiro was right but wanting to argue anyways, but he’s interrupted by the screens flooding, once again, with the red light indicating that they’re once again in communication with Dak’ruutha. 

“I am only humoring this request for communication only because I know there is no way you will ever retrieve your precious Heart from our clutches. Any pleas you make will be futile.” The deep voice that Keith hated now more than anything else in the entire universe flowed from the speakers, and Keith pointed an indignant finger towards the screen.

“See?! This is fucking pointless! Let’s—” Shiro clamped a hand over Keith’s mouth and gave him a glare that was sharper than Keith’s luxite blade. 

“Why do you want him?” Shiro asked firmly, schooling any and all emotion from his face and voice, going into pure diplomat mode. “Whatever it is, I’m certain we can arrange other ways of getting it for you, ways that will have each of our peoples’ lives intact.”

Dak’ruutha ignored him, chuckling darkly.

“Is it universal across all of your species to be so protective over others, or is it a trait unique to your Heart?” he said, entirely unrelated.

“What—?” Allura started.

“Right from the moment we captured him, he hasn’t stopped shouting about how we’ll never get your princess. He claims he’ll never stop fighting until the rest of you are safe from harm. I do not think he realizes just how safe you have become at his expense.” Dak’ruutha continued as if Allura had never spoken, but at the words of update on Lance’s condition, the crew had gone silent, awaiting good news.

Of course there was none.

“Your heart is still alive, but my rebels are having great fun pushing him to his limits. He is surprisingly smart-mouthed, even as he bleeds.”

“ _ Let him go you sick period blood colored fuck! _ ” Pidge shrieked vehemently, throwing herself at the screen as if she could teleport through it and strangle the masked enemy with her bare hands. Shiro caught her around the waist just in time before her fist actually drove into the screen. The Dak’ruutha made a  _ tch  _ noise, but other than that made no effort to respond to her insult.

“Oh, so you  _ do  _ care! We were starting to worry that we’d actually taken a servant or something equally as… inessential.” Dak’ruutha chuckled again, and Keith felt like a knife had been driven into his chest. “Would you like to see him?”

Without giving the team time to respond, Dak’ruutha stepped aside to make room on the screen for a pair of rebels walking through a door on the left side of the room they were standing in. Limping between them was the one and only Lance McClain, cuffed at the wrists. The knife in Keith’s chest twisted. 

He was very obviously battered, his right eye had swollen shut and there were bruises littering his cheekbones. A gash that went through his left eyebrow and continued diagonally across his nose, barely missing his eye, was dripping blood down his face. His gauzy traditional attire had been torn in several places, and Keith could only imagine the horrors across his body that the floaty material covered. He walked with a slight limp, wincing with each step on his right leg. 

“On your knees,” barked one of the rebels.

“J-jeez, at least t-t-take me on a date first—ugh!” Lance’s quip was cut short as the butt of the rebel on his left’s gun cracked sharply against the back of his head, causing Lance to crumple to his knees. Pidge screamed. At this, Lance’s head whipped up. He saw the screen for the first time, and his face lit up. 

“Guys! You’re ok-kay!” he rasped. He sounded like he’d been screaming. Then his shoulders sagged, and for a panicked moment Keith thought he’d fallen unconscious, but he was smiling softly.  _ Oh,  _ thought Keith,  _ he’s relieved. _ “Oh, ‘Lura... ‘M glad you’re s-safe,” he slurred.  _ Now  _ he was definitely sagging into unconsciousness. 

“He’s falling asleep again,” Dak’ruutha’s voice sounded from off screen, and the rebel on Lance’s right nodded like he’d done this a thousand times before. He pulled a tiny black device from his robe pockets and drove it into Lance’s chest. 

Suddenly his eyes flew open, and he arched his back and  _ screamed.  _

Keith felt his stomach flop, he was physically going to be sick at the sound. This was no grunt of pain through the comms during a Galra fight, this was no shriek of mock anger after Pidge insulted him. This scream was pure, unhinged agony.

Keith didn’t realize he’d been screaming too until he found his throat raw after Lance suddenly stopped, the rebel soldier sliding the black device back into his pocket. Pidge was writhing against Shiro’s grip around her waist, sobbing incoherently and scratching at him, begging him to  _ let me go, let me go to him, Lance, Lance! _

“ _ Fuck,  _ how many times do I gotta tell you, a little slap will do just fine!” Lance said, his voice more hoarse than before. 

“Guys, I heard screaming. What’s going—oh.” Hunk crashed through the control room doors, and his face contorted into horror at the sight of Lance on the screen.

“Oh, hey Hunk! Welcome to the party!” Lance said, shaking his shoulder in what was probably supposed to be a wave. He was decidedly more awake now, no longer stumbling over words or slurring them together. Keith hated it. He hated that they had apparently been doing this to him enough to say ‘how many times do I gotta tell you.’

“Chain him up here, right in front of the family that abandoned him. Tell the others that they will continue their ministrations in this room.” Dak’ruutha said, then returned to the screen’s view, obscuring Lance.

“Bring it on, bitches. As long as those people on that screen are safe and sound, I’m fine wherever I am,” Lance said cooly as the rebels grabbed his arms and dragged him towards a divot in the opposite wall where they chained him in place. Keith sucked in a sharp breath at the waver of fear in the Blue Paladin’s voice, a small but heartbreaking blemish in his otherwise perfectly determined tone. Dak’ruutha made an amused noise before completely blocking Lance from view with his body. 

“We will break him, break your heart, and you will watch. I would like to see you try to form Voltron without him. Maybe this little show will be enough to put you all into an early retirement? Who knows!” Dak’ruutha sounded  _ delighted  _ and it made Keith feel like throwing up or punching something or both. Then the masked alien turned on his heel and stalked out of the room, off to the left. But before exiting the frame completely, he turned back to the screen. 

“Thank you for calling, by the way. I wouldn’t have thought of this without you.” then he stepped away and they were left watching the rebels finish chaining him to the wall. 

“We’re going to get the others, maggot. Get ready to scream louder than you ever have before.” said one, then they turned and exited, and Lance was alone. He let out a breath.

“Guys, as thrilled as I am to see you, I want you to turn off the comms.” His voice was firm, but there was another waver of fear. Faint, but Keith felt it to his core nonetheless.

“What?! No!” Pidge shrieked. 

“Pidge, yes. I don’t want you to see this. He’s only trying to rile you guys up, and I need you focused if you’re gonna get me out of here,” He said with a wry little smile. Only Lance would be smiling while facing what will surely be the beating of a lifetime. And it was all to protect _them_ from the horrors, the stupid, selfless motherfucker. 

“No, we’re not leaving you,” Allura said.  _ Again,  _ Keith mentally pinned on bitterly. She was standing straight and resolute, but her hands held the slightest of tremors at her side. Lance sighed deeply. 

“Look, guys, I know you’re worried, but remember, I’m not the one they want.” Shiro inhaled sharply. “If you just do whatever Dak’ruutha sets up for you, all you’ll be doing is playing Allura right into his hands. Sure, things suck right now, I’m not denying it. But there are always healing pods. I’ll be fine. Allura is the top priority, remember?” 

“No, Lance,” sobbed Hunk. “It’s  _ you, you’re  _ the Heart of Voltron. It’s always been you.” Lance’s spine stiffened.

“What? But he said—”

“When he addressed me in the ballroom he was issuing a warning to me as the leader of the Paladins. All he said was that he was going to take the Heart. He never said it was me.” Allura stepped up, her voice smooth even as tears finally fell from her eyes. Lance was quiet for a moment, he seemed to be tossing his thoughts back and forth, trying to untangle the mess of information they’d just given him. Finally he looked up to the screen and gave them a big, cheesy grin.

“No, that doesn’t make sense. How could  _ I  _ be the heart? I'm  _ obviously  _ the rockin’ bod of Voltron. I mean, have you seen me in this gown?” Lance said, and if he could be shooting them finger guns Keith knew he definitely would be. 

“We’re coming for you, buddy. We’ll be there soon, I promise.” Hunk said in way of reply, and Lance nodded. 

“I know you will, Hunkalicious definition.” Lance said. Hunk laughed at the nickname, and Keith watched the exchange with bittersweet confusion. The bond between the two of them had always been a profound sort of friendship that he’d never understood. When the Garrison Trio got together, nothing could stop their combined genius and fun-loving antics.

Abruptly, the telltale sound of the doors sliding open came from Lance’s right and he looked over at them then quickly back to the screen, determination drowning the growing panic in his eyes.

“Cut the comms,” he commanded as about a dozen rebels came flooding into the room.

“No, Lance—” Keith spoke up for the first time since Lance’s screaming.

“CUT THE FUCKING COMMS!” Lance shouted as one soldier approached him, a wicked looking metal device that looked a lot like a hand mixer combined with an electric drill whirring in his hands. 

“Already squealing for help, maggot?” the rebel said, then drove his armored knee swiftly into Lance’s face with a sickening  _ crack.  _

“Lance!” Pidge wailed, tearing at Shiro’s arms with renewed vigor. Lance just kept on shouting over the chaos of his team disintegrating into hysteria.

“Guys, don’t do this, don’t do what he wants, just focus on getting here! Cut the—get your hands off me shithead, those gloves don’t even fit you—AAH!” His commands contorted into screams as the rebel drove the spinning metal device deep into Lance’s side. Keith was shouting unintelligibly as rage and fear flooded his senses, watching the blood come flying from Lance’s wound in sick splatters, staining the wall, his face, the armor of the rebels.

Hunk started retching, Allura was trying to say something but it looked like she’d lost her voice, she was just gasping for air like it wasn’t there. Pidge was hysterical, her limbs thrashing and bucking against Shiro, whose face was white as a sheet.

“C-c-c-cut the c-comms, p-please,” Lance choked. “J-just turn them—”

A deafening silence replaced the sounds of his screams and the wicked whirring of the rebel torture device as the screen disappeared from view. Keith was still shouting something—he realized with a start that it was in Korean—and Pidge was still desperately trying to get out of Shiro’s grasp, screaming and crying unintelligibly, but the screen was gone. All eyes fell to Coran, who was hunched over the control panel, his shoulders quivering. He looked up, and his eyes looked haunted. His face was pale, and in that moment he looked a thousand years older. A long silence filled the room as Keith stopped his shouting and Pidge’s cries turned into whimpers which turned into soft little gasps. She fell limp in Shiro’s hold, and allowed herself to be lowered to the floor, a quiet, sobbing heap. The air was pregnant with shock.

Finally, after who knows how long, Coran took a deep breath and sat up, raking his gloved hands through his hair.

“Let’s get our boy.”

  
  


The loss of his team’s presence, no matter how digital, was more painful than Lance had predicted. He didn’t want them to watch him be tortured, but now that the comms were off he was officially alone. A hot, heavy fear coiled in his stomach as more rebels revealed different elaborate torture devices from the folds of their alien clothing, fluttering and curling around itself in tendrils like drops of blood in water. 

The rebels were leaning in close, watching him scream and gasp intently as if waiting for him to explode into fairy dust. The metallic torture device continued digging into him, and he could feel it starting to scrape against the bones of his ribs. He was positive that a few of them snapped. Lance’s resolve to remain determined in front of teammates had crumbled the second they complied with his wishes and withdrew their presence. He allowed himself, finally, to cry unrestrained. 

He screamed until he couldn’t scream any more, and whenever he felt himself starting to fall unconscious, one of the rebels would pull out one of their alien tasers and he would be back as alert as the day he was born. 

He wanted his team. 

He wanted Hunk’s hugs to envelop him, a soft warmth against which even the coziest of fireplaces or the creamiest of hot chocolates stood no rival.

He wanted to be fist bumping with Pidge then hooking an arm out to capture her in a chokehold, scruffing her messy hair while she giggled and slapped at him with those pointy, deadly little hands of hers.

He wanted Shiro to firmly clap his hands over his shoulders and congratulate him on a job well done, eyes shining with pride.

He wanted to be sitting in Allura’s bathroom wearing face masks and braiding her hair while she dropped her usual diplomatic coolness in exchange for the pinched frustration of a young woman living alone on a ship filled with teenage boys (plus Shiro, Coran, and Pidge, who were no better).

He wanted to be sitting in the control room with Coran, gazing out at space and only half listening to the elaborate tales he spun from the pictures in the stars, his mind floating in a strange place between daydream and reality that he could only ever enter there with the ginger Altean.

He wanted to be sitting in Keith’s room talking and joking and comforting one another, their bond having just started to get somewhere further than just rivals and breaching into friend territory when they left for this mission—and with the casual touches that Keith seemed to lean into and the lingering glances they gave each other, it seemed it might have grown into something more than that. 

He just wanted his team—no, his family. Dak’ruutha had been right about one thing, they were a family. And the memory of his family was something he clung onto, barely a spiderweb in the abyss of pain and darkness that was his present, but a sliver of hope nonetheless. They would get him out of here, he was sure of it. 

When he thought about it, his part would be easy. All he had to do was sit there and take a bit of torture, no biggie. They actually had to devise, organize, and eventually execute a big elaborate rescue plot. It would not be an easy feat, and Lance was glad that it was him that was captured. Anyone else would have taken a large chunk out of their armor. Without Hunk’s engineering and strength, without Pidge’s brain, without Shiro’s level head, without Allura’s shapeshifting and alchemic abilities, without Coran’s strategical advisorship, without Keith’s courage and agility on the battlefield, they would be doomed. 

Having Lance there would have been nothing but a hindrance. He was the only one on the team who managed to get himself captured, wasn’t he? He had nothing, no piece to add to the team. He was just a burden.

No, he couldn't allow himself to think that way. Not while he’s here, chained to the wall in a scary place with red lightning and a dozen masked faces cheering and screaming things at him as they carved various pieces of him apart if only to hear him cry. 

Besides, they apparently thought he was Voltron’s  _ heart.  _ As wrong as he thought it was, the thought still was comforting. At least  _ someone  _ thought he was useful.

Even if that thought would be Lance’s undoing. 

He wished he could say that the torture was so overwhelming that it went by in a blur, but with those fucking black boxes he was not so lucky. Lance was lucid and aware of every  _ second.  _ Each time he felt the pain starting to become a throbbing sort of numbness that comes from familiarity, like swimming in the cold oceans, the rebel would withdraw from their ministrations and resume elsewhere on his body.

So far the drill-like device had been removed and plunged back into him about three different times, the first at his ribs, the second at his thigh, the third back at his side, lower than the first, and the fourth was aiming for his bicep when a rebel reached their black hand out and stopped it.

“This is too messy,” it said with distaste. “His screams of agony had been fun at first, but they grow boring with time.” The way these aliens spoke of his torture held a chilling sort of detachment, as if they were talking about a baseball game rather than his gruesome physical and mental deterioration. 

“What, you suggest we stop?” said the one with the drill incredulously. 

“No, I just think we should switch mediums. Perhaps we can coax a different sort of sound out of him. We no longer have to put on a show for the other Paladins,” the other said, a sneer tingeing its voice. “It seems they have abandoned him a second time in favor of cowering in—”

“They’ve n-never abandoned me you f-f-fucks,” Lance spat, tasting blood. These rebels could do anything they wanted to him, but if they insulted his friends who were no doubt working tirelessly to rescue him this very moment, that was where Lance drew the line. “I told them to c-cut off our t-t-transmission so you w-wouldn’t have the pleasure of shaking their f-f-f-focus.”

“Oh, poor little creature. He doesn’t know,” one of the rebels near the back of the group sneered, and his voice sounded like he was the kind of guy who didn’t regularly brush his teeth. Lance hoped he didn’t get any closer. 

“Don’t know what?” Lance snapped, now that the torture had come to a hold he could work harder to keep his voice from trembling. He was pleased at how the rebel closest to him flinched back slightly at his tone. The rebel who sounded like a total sleazeball pushed through the crowd of his masked comrades to kneel in front of Lance, so close that his nose almost touched the smooth surface of his mask. 

“Your friends forgot about you.” he said darkly, and Lance could tell he was smiling. He felt something hot and angry flare up in his stomach, causing his blood to boil.

“That's a big fat lie and you know it, barf breath. They called in to get me the second they made it back to the castle and dropped Allura off. They didn’t forget me, they just had o-other priorities.” All these angry retorts were starting to wear what little strength the Blue Paladin had left away. Still, he kept his chin held high even as the wounds across his body burned like hellfire.

“You must’ve missed the first transmission, then. Lord Dak’ruutha had to call them and tell them that we had you before they even realized you were gone!” 

Lance’s heart dropped like a stone into a pond. Surely it wasn't true—as useless as he sometimes felt on the team, they wouldn’t just outright  _ forget him  _ on an  _ alien planet. _

Still, the painful truth niggled at him: the truth that they would sometimes launch into mission reports or disappear to the training bay without him, apologizing profusely once he got back to them but having forgotten him all the same. Lance didn’t mind so much, he always used to crave the center of attention but nowadays it just felt like he was burdening others or being annoying whenever he stood in the spotlight.

What made it worse was the fact that they never seemed to forget anyone else. As far as Lance had observed, every time a team member other than himself was late for something, they made sure to wait until they could get back. If Lance stumbled out of bed just a little too late or was just a little too far in the depths of the castle, he would be left behind and forgotten. 

_ No.  _ Stop that. It’s just the rebels trying to get into his head and shake his confidence, just like Dak’ruutha had attempted before his team was brave enough to turn off the transmission and thwart his plans. They might forget him every once in a while during menial things like mealtimes and mission reports, but they would never do that when there were such dangerous risks.

And besides, they called him  _ Lord  _ Dak’ruutha? That was a little much. If there was anything Lance’s older brother Luis had taught him, it was to never trust a theater kid during their monologues. Dak’ruutha obviously was just the leader of a very large squadron of deadly alien theater kids, and  _ man  _ did they love their dramatic monologues.

In fact, Lance realized with a start, Barfbreath was in the middle of one now. He’d started to creep near the edge of unconsciousness as the words blurred into unintelligible, but afraid of the rebels’ wakey-taser-things, he urged himself back into the real world, the fight against sleep starting to feel more and more physical as opposed to metaphorical as time wore on. 

“—Since the heart is you, it must be broken in order to cause—hey, are you even listening to me?!” Barfbreath growled. Lance let his eyes take their time fluttering open. He didn’t want to give the rebel the satisfaction of controlling any part of him that Lance still had a say in, his focus being one of the biggest of these. 

“Forget it. Let’s just do what I initially proposed,” said the rebel who had stopped the drill from going into him a fourth time. “I have been hoping to try this out on him.”

He pulled from the depths of his robes a thin, simple knife whose metal was an odd rosy pink color. It had a similarly simple hilt, made of smooth metal and garnished at the junction between handle and blade with an eight sided star shaped jewel. Lance peered at it curiously, wondering just what this little blade could have against a  _ literal torture drill.  _ Why start with the worst and progressively get less and less painful?

“I say we start our canvas out with a heart. Any objections?” the rebel asked. The others cheered excitedly, urging him to get on with it. So with a chuckle, the rebel bent over Lance’s back, exposed by his Sh’kivian traditional robe’s stylized backing. Once again, Lance wondered why such a mediocre form of punishment would be chosen compared to the drill. He also wondered why they’d called him a  _ canvas.  _ Was it alien slang term for captive or something? Maybe they meant to—

The thin tip of the knife dipping none too gently into the skin of his back, curving meticulously into the telltale shape of a cartoon heart, interrupted his thoughts.

Oh.

That was why.

  
  


It wasn’t for another three painstaking, sleepless, frantic days that Hunk finally found something that might be of use to rescuing Lance. Three days where Lance was being tortured and mutilated in ways that the team could only imagine. Three days where Keith was so fucking irritable and antsy that he could barely hold still.

“Guys, c’mere, I think I found some sort of clue,” the Yellow Paladin said, hunched over the screen at his chair. In an instant, Keith was vaulting over his own control room chair’s armrest and sprinting over towards him. Pidge skidded up to Keith’s right not a tick later, quickly followed by Allura, Shiro, and Coran. 

“What is it?” Keith demanded impatiently. Finally,  _ finally,  _ maybe they could start fucking  _ doing _ something instead of meandering around the castle twiddling their thumbs while Lance was no doubt being tortured to the edge of his life.

Maybe he was already gone.

“Okay, so we know that Dak’ruutha and his army of resistance fighters took over the castle soon after we left. Thanks to Pidge’s remote scanning system, we can see the heat signatures of the guards that they've placed throughout the corridors.” Hunk explained, and Keith shuddered, shaking the morbid thoughts that it might be too late from his head. He couldn’t afford to get distracted, that was what Dak’ruutha wanted. Keith would never give him the pleasure.

“I’ve been pouring over the guard rotations like crazy, trying to find some sort of blind spot that would allow us to get into the castle, thinking that after we infiltrated them we could just do the same thing we did to get out in the first place and somehow locate Lance.” The plan Hunk was outlining sounded like a suicide mission. Relying on dumb luck? Keith didn’t like it one bit. Luck had never been on his side, and he’d learned to expect the worst from life. Sure, it was pessimistic, but it prevented him from getting disappointed. But this Lance situation called for some serious optimism if he and the team were going to keep their spirits and motivations up, so Keith had been trying his best to veer away from negativity. Besides, he desperately didn’t want to think about a universe without Lance in it. They had just started to become close, and he wasn’t ready to lose that.

“The thing is, they’re totally random!” Hunk cried exasperatedly. “It looks like they’re confident enough and they have enough guards that they just send new people out every once in a while with different numbers every time. The hallways are always packed with guards, so they don’t need a schedule. There isn’t anything to exploit.” Keith growled at the information. This didn’t sound like a clue. It sounded like giving up. 

“I was starting to lose hope when I noticed this,” Hunk said, pulling a smaller screen up from the bottom of his display. Keith perked up a little bit, leaning in closer. The display showed a glowing blue holographic map of one corridor on the west side of the castle, the opposite side they’d escaped from. There were about twenty or so little red dots that indicated a servant’s heat signatures inside the corridor, with a similar number inside a room branching off from it. 

Keith was about to ask what the big deal was—it looked like any other corridor jammed to the brim with guards—when suddenly the mass of guards inside the room poured out into the corridor, leaving the room empty. 

“I’m gonna fast forward just a bit, this is a recording from about twenty dobashes ago. Look,” Hunk said, then adjusted something on the video. The dots indicating guards vibrated a bit, moving around the corridor in fast motion as Hunk skipped ahead. 

“This is twelve and a half dobashes later,” he said, returning the recording to regular speed. Keith’s eyes widened as every single guard in the corridor exited to the right, leaving it entirely empty.

“What are they—?” Keith asked, but Hunk shushed him.

“Hang on, let me fast forward again. This is fifteen dobashes later.” 

Like the clip played before except in reverse, a sea of red dots crowded into the corridor then into the room branching off. A few ticks passed, and another plethora of red dots came crowding into the corridor. 

“This is their  _ only  _ patterned guard rotation in the entire castle, and that room is the  _ only  _ room that has more than one or two people in it at a time.” He shut the screen down then turned to the rest of the crew, a smug smile pushing past his tired face. “I wonder why  _ that  _ could be?” 

“Hunk, you’re incredible,” Pidge gushed, leaning over the chair to throw her arms around the dark skinned boy’s neck. 

“Well, what are we waiting for? The time between them all leaving and coming back was like half a varga, right? That’ll be plenty of time to get in, break Lance out, and leave. I say we get going,” Keith said, his fingers already itching for his bayard. If he thought he was irritable and impatient before, it’s exponentially worse now that they actually have a semblance of a lead. These past three days have been torture for all of them, and with Lance’s absence Keith was starting to realize how much he actually relied on the Blue Paladin to be someone he could lean on and talk to. He never noticed it before, but most of his free time nowadays was spent in one of their rooms just talking. They had more conversations together than Keith had with Shiro, which was really saying something. 

“I wonder why they need so many people there guarding him at once?” Pidge interjected, tapping her chin with her finger while still draped over Hunk’s shoulder. “Do you think he’s seriously putting up that much of a fight?”

Allura shook her head. “No, he looked very… stationary… during that transmission. They wouldn’t need all those guards to keep him locked up.”

“Maybe they’re not guards,” Keith added, his voice thick. Something in his throat constricted as his brain worked around what he would say next. The thought was repulsive, but he had to say it anyway. “You saw what they were doing—the rebels, right before we—” Allura took a sharp intake of breath.

“Oh my god, you’re right,” Shiro whispered. “And there were about twenty in that room that time. They aren't guarding him, they’re...” He trailed off, unable to finish.

“Those fuckers,” Pidge muttered bitterly, “are taking turns. Torturing him.”

“The rotations, I’ve been counting, they switch every two vargas, day and night. Which means there’s been—” Hunk’s voice was hoarse, and he paused and counted something on his fingers before gasping sharply. “Thirty one rotations.”

“At least we know he’s still…” Coran was quiet, but his words sounded like it had been screamed into Keith’s ears.

The thick silence following was interrupted by Shiro. “How far are they through the current rotation?” Hunk scrambled through the controls for a second before peering contemplatively at a set of stats in the corner of his screen.

“They’re halfway through the thirty second one right now,” he responded. Shiro took a deep breath.

“Alright team, you know I don’t like rushing in without a thorough plan,” hope and excitement fluttered in Keith’s chest, “but we need him back. Dak’ruutha was right, he  _ is  _ our heart. I don’t want him to be there a second longer.”

“Yes. Finally. Let’s  _ go, _ ” Keith shifted from foot to foot anxiously. He longed to have Lance back with him, safe and sound. He wanted to grab him around the shoulders and hold him close and never let go. 

He just  _ wanted.  _

“Alright, everyone, pile in to Red. I think I’ve got a little bit of a plan, I’ll explain along the way.”

  
  


Lance’s sleep was fitful. The rebels were taking turns torturing him, and the time they spent there each guard rotation was hard to pinpoint. The torture felt like days, the breaks in between were spent desperately trying to get some shut-eye before they came back, weapons drawn.

He honestly didn’t know why they were doing this, what was the purpose of keeping him alive longer? If he died, so did Voltron. What was Dak’ruutha’s big holdup? He’d tried to ask once, but the rebel had just sneered and told him that they wanted to ruin him as much as possible before they killed him. There  _ had  _ to be more to it. What kind of monsters would just senselessly torture for the entertainment of it?

He didn’t know how long he’d been here, a day? A week? Time seemed to blur together after a while.  _ God,  _ he was exhausted. They kept him awake with those  _ fucking  _ tasers, and the lack of sleep was killing him almost as painfully as the torture. The rebels seemed to have taken a liking to the little knife tricks. Lance couldn’t see his back, but he knew that a large, heart-shaped expanse of it was absolutely riddled with carvings. With his arms chained behind him, it was hard to find a comfortable way to sit without agitating it. Every touch against it felt like fire, bringing tears to the corners of his eyes. He hoped desperately that it wasn’t infected. 

Once they’d run out of room back there, they doodled little swirls along his shoulders and chest with surprising skill. Coran had told them that this was a planet of artists in all shapes and forms, which apparently applied to knifeplay as well. 

At one point, they got tired of his eyes. They said they were ‘too blue’ and it was ‘annoying’ when he looked at them. Lance remembered hearing somewhere that if you’re being mugged by someone with a weapon, you should always try to maintain eye contact with the attacker because it reminds them that you’re a person and makes it morally harder for them to hurt you, which was probably the case here. So they blindfolded him. It hurt the gash on his face like a bitch, and he now had to rely entirely on sound to sense when they were coming in next. He’d been making it a goal to tell a stupid joke each time as a greeting, partially to maintain a carefree air—never let them see him break—and partially to count exactly how many times a new set of guards came in. He only thought of it around the fifth or sixth rotation, and he’d told twenty six jokes so far. It was a crude way of counting, but it brought at least a little entertainment to the bleakness that was his current situation. 

The doors slid open, and Lance whipped his head up, mustering a sleepy grin. 

“Hey guys, long time no see. What do you call a good farmer?” He asked, and his voice sounded foreign and far away. 

“Shut up brat,” said a rebel alarmingly close to his ear. Lance turned towards it and increased the force of his grin. 

“A man out standing in his field!” he said, and the rebel immediately bitchslapped him across the face. 

And so it continued.

  
  


Keith landed on the roof with a grunt. Just above him, Red was flickering in and out of existence. Pidge’s impromptu cloaking modification had been a quick and messy job, but it was enough to keep her relatively hidden, especially in the Sh’kivian night sky. He was quickly followed by Pidge, who stumbled, but kept her footing. Hunk and Shiro were to remain inside red with a rope so they could pull Pidge up after Keith, who would be carrying Lance and using the jetpack on his armor. They’d left their Paladin armor inside their Lions in order to keep them safe while they were in the ballroom during the party—God, it felt like years ago—so Keith was the only one who would be able to fly up quickly. 

“Alright, hold, they still aren't done yet,” Pidge whispered, peering at her wrist display of the heat signatures inside the room they’d landed on top of. It was the room they assumed Lance to be held in, and the thirty fourth rotation would be finished in about two dobashes.

Thirty fourth. Lance had been getting tortured for three rotations since they’d left.

It made Keith’s stomach churn.

“Okay, they’re starting to leave,” Pidge announced, snapping Keith back to the present. “I’ll let you know when it’s empty.” Keith nodded, readying his bayard and looking anxiously around. No one had seen Red yet, which was good. Fortunately, due to the layout of the castle, Lance’s room was accessible through the roof, and the plan was to use Pidge’s bayard to get in. They had to be fast, however, because the noise from the section of roof against the floor was bound to alert  _ someone.  _ Keith was to leap in, chop Lance’s handcuffs, and jetpack back out. They’d be back in Red and on their way to the castle within the dobash.

Keith prayed that Lady Luck would be on their side. 

“Alright,  _ now! _ ” Pidge hissed, and drove her bayard into the ceiling. It cut through the metal-plastic like a hot knife through butter, and in ticks a rough circular shape that was big enough for both Lance and Keith appeared in the metal. She stomped on it harshly a couple times, the jarring noise making Keith flinch and look around for any guards to come running up to them. The circular shape gave way, and a hole to a room lit dimly in red emerged.

Sure enough, the roof made a loud crash, but Keith was too preoccupied with his mission to bother worrying. He immediately dove into the room, glancing around desperately before sure enough, his eyes landed on a clump on the opposite side of the room. The clump shifted, an as his chin tilted up, Keith saw that a thick black blindfold covered his eyes, no doubt irritating the gash across his face. Then he did something strange.

He smiled.

It was a horrible ghost of the genuine smiles Keith was used to from him. It looked tired but determined, confident but terrified.

“Back so soon, boys?” he asked, and it took Keith a moment to realize that it was  _ Lance  _ talking.  _ His Lance.  _ It was so hoarse and rough and cold, like listening to a hailstorm drum against your window. “Oh well, you know the drill. I’ve got a good one for you this time. What do you call a fish with no eyes?”

“Lance,” Keith breathed, and the Paladin looked up, startled. His wry smile was gone, replaced by absolute shock. 

“Kei—no, wait, it can’t be,” Lance seemed to shrink in on himself, backing away and towards the wall. “This is some new torture tactic you guys are trying out.” 

“No, Lance,” Keith said, and he was just  _ broken.  _ He couldn’t see the extent of the Blue Paladin’s injuries from here, but the fact that he was just constantly  _ expecting it  _ was like an axe to the heart. “I’m here, shh, it’s okay,” Keith snapped out of whatever heartbroken daze he had been stuck in and sprinted over to the boy chained to the wall. He drew his sword down harshly against the handcuffs, and they split in half easily. 

“Ahh,” Lance groaned gratefully, pulling his hands out in front of him but wincing slightly, like they’d cramped after being stuck in the same place for so long. Keith then looped his arm around Lance’s waist and hooked one under his legs and started carrying the boy bridal style over to the hole just in time for Pidge to say urgently into the comms, “come  _ on  _ Keith, hurry! They’re coming back!” 

“I got Lance! On my way up, Shiro and Hunk, start getting Pidge into Red,  _ hurry! _ ” All three of his other teammates breathed a sigh of relief at the news, and Keith started up his jetpack with Lance still in his arms. He felt about a thousand pounds lighter compared to the last time he’d carried the brunet like this (they don’t talk about the drunken Truth or Dare night), and Keith’s heart ached to just stop everything and cradle him closer.

No, he couldn’t afford to think about anything but saving Lance. His jetpack came to life and he sputtered up through the roof and in through Red’s mouth just as the doors slid open to reveal a handful of rebel guards. Shiro and Hunk finished pulling Pidge back in just as the first shots started firing, and Keith leaped into the cockpit and pulled away into space.

Red screamed relief into his head, and suddenly Keith remembered the panicked message Red had been sending as they pulled away from Sh’kiv the first time: that they had left someone behind. 

“Oh my god, you were trying—” Keith choked, but his throat tightened before he could finish his sentence. Red sent the mental signal of aggressive affirmation, roaring about how stupid Keith had been and how he should just  _ listen to her  _ when she tries to talk. Before Keith knew it he was crying for his second time in three days. 

The first had been on the night that they got back to the Castle Ship and he’d left after the transmission feeling numb and deflated. He left the control room with Shiro, who was holding Pidge like a baby on his chest, her head leaning against his shoulder. Her breathing came in shuddering gasps, the way that it does after you’ve been crying for too long. 

They arrived at Pidge’s door first, and Shiro told him he was going to stay in her room until she fully fell asleep to make sure she was okay. Keith just nodded, staring straight ahead, and walked away without letting Shiro say anything more. 

After that communication with Dak’ruutha, seeing what they were doing to Lance—it didn’t feel real. Keith felt like he was watching this all happen through someone else, like he could barely even feel his body. Every footstep in the empty halls on the way to his room felt dreamlike. 

It wasn’t until he passed Lance’s room, the last one on the way to Keith’s, did it finally hit him. All at once, like a rubber band snapping after slowly stretching it out, the gravity of the situation slammed into him like a brick wall. 

Lance was captured. Lance was captured and being  _ tortured  _ because they forgot about him. Lance had still thought that he was unimportant to the team until they told him he was the heart all along, Lance thought himself entirely expendable if it meant keeping Allura safe. 

Lance just wanted them all to be happy. Even if it meant he was hurting himself. The brunet had told him this exact thing one late night while they lay on their combined mattresses on Keith’s floor, both of them drunk off of tiredness and in a particularly vulnerable mood. Keith hadn’t understood how fucking  _ important  _ that would be until now. 

Lance might be gone forever. And it was all because Keith hadn’t cared enough to  _ glance back and make sure they were all accounted for  _ before lifting off. 

Lance could be gone. 

Keith’s knees hit the ground in front of Lance’s door with a  _ thud.  _ He hadn’t felt himself falling, but now he felt everything at once. He took one deep, shaking breath that didn’t seem to reach his lungs, and in his next exhale he was sobbing. Deep, shuddering, aching sobs that wracked his entire body. He let his head droop, his arms limp at his sides, and he cried. 

“I’m sorry,” he moaned, and his body pitched forward to lean against the door. He took another breath, but he still felt like he was running out of oxygen. 

“ _ Lance, _ ” he cried, and put a hand weakly against the cold door. It didn’t say anything in response, and Keith cried harder. When he woke up, there were still tear tracks on his face, and his body ached from sleeping against the door. 

This time, Keith didn’t allow himself to fully dissolve. He gasped sharply a few times, and buried the heels of his hands deeply into the hollows of his eyes until he saw swirling purple shapes. Only a few tears sprung free, and Keith wiped them away quickly. Red had stopped roaring and was prodding at him gently, comforting him. He smiled, but even he could tell it was shaky. 

“Thanks girl,” he whispered, and guided her back to the Castle Ship. Just before they got there, Hunk clambered into the cockpit.

“How’s he doing?” Keith asked quietly. 

“Not good,” Hunk responded hoarsely. “What they did—it’s completely—” he groaned and took a deep breath, not wanting to get too worked up. “They’re monsters.” He said simply. Keith stiffened but nodded grimly, keeping his eyes glued to the Castle’s docking bay where he could land Red then get out and check on Lance.  _ God,  _ he needed Lance to be okay. The need was so deep an ache he felt it to his bones. He was suddenly reminded of how it felt when the announcement of Shiro’s disappearance came out. He was similarly gutted. 

They landed, and Keith was out of his seat in a second, sprinting back down to Red’s mouth. 

It was there that he got his first good look at Lance. 

And the world turned grey.

Lance’s blindfold had been removed, revealing a gash caked in blood. His eye was no longer swollen shut, but there were a few new cuts across his lips and forehead and cheeks. But that wasn’t the worst part, no, the worst part was—well, the rest. 

His back had been carved at like a pocketknife carves lovers’ initials into soft tree bark. It featured a large heart filled with various swirling patterns, expertly engineered to cover the most surface area with damage while still remaining artistic. Keith hated them,  _ god  _ he hated them with a fire that rivaled the inferno he could shoot from Red’s mouth. Furthermore, Lance’s arms, collarbones, chest, and neck had been carved into, decorated by hearts and more of that densely designed swirling. It was like they were  _ decorating  _ him. Mocking him with heart shapes. 

He also had a few deep, nasty looking wounds along his side, and one look at the way his flesh swirled in on itself in broken pieces was enough to tell Keith that it had come from that drill machine they’d seen on the transmission. 

He hated them. No, he more hated himself for letting this happen. In a way, Keith had been the one doing every single infliction of pain upon the boy, who had fallen unconscious along the way back. Keith had been the one driving, he could hear Red telling him to go back, but he ignored her. It was all Keith, all his fault, all his—

“Whatever you’re thinking right now, stop it.” Hunk commanded. He was kneeled by Lance’s side, helping him into Shiro’s arm to be taken to the healing pod Allura and Coran had prepared for him while they were gone. Keith looked up, surprised to find his vision blurry. He tried to blink back the tears, but one traitor slipped down his cheek without his permission. 

“Oh, Keith,” Pidge said quietly. Then she stood up and wrapped her arms around his middle in a hug. It wasn’t the same as Lance’s hugs. He always wrapped Keith up like a boa constrictor, and he always made them seem so  _ intimate.  _ He would put one hand at the base of Keith’s neck, massaging his scalp thoughtlessly while the other hand wrapped tightly around his waist, thumb tracing circles along his ribcage. It was impossible to  _ not  _ get lost in him. 

“Thanks,” Keith said gruffly, trailing slightly behind Shiro and Hunk. Allura and Coran burst in not a moment later, and Allura gasped. Coran remained silent, but his face had turned ashen. 

“Lance,” Allura whispered brokenly, reaching out to touch his face. He flinched at the contact, and his blue eyes flew open with a start. 

“Wh—‘Lura?” he muttered, his eyes fluttering like he was straining to keep them open. “I’m srry, ‘m jus sleepy…” he slurred, his eyes rolling back to his head and his eyelids finally closing. 

“Get him to a pod, come on now, quickly,” Coran said, his voice cracking. They rushed through the halls, Keith’s ears ringing with the lingering shock of seeing him for the first time since the transmission. That was  _ Lance?  _ They’d idled for  _ three days  _ without any clues while this was happening to  _ their Lance?  _ He was shocked and angry and just so bitterly disgusted with himself he could hardly breathe. 

He was heartbroken.

The Sh’kivian rebels sure had achieved their goal. 

Lance was pushed into a pod, his consciousness barely there. Then the pod closed like a shimmering glass curtain and he was out cold. 

It felt strangely anticlimactic. There had been no big fight, no angry face off with Dak’ruutha as he monologued about the Sh’kivian bourgeois, no saccharine sweet reunion. Still, Keith didn’t let his eyes stray from the boy behind the translucent blue glass. 

He was home. 

  
  


Dak’ruutha had been enjoying the luxuries of the royal kitchen on what would have been a perfect evening when he heard the news. Everything was perfect. They’d kidnapped the heart, set him up with the markings for the breaking ritual, and the altar was nearly finished. Everything he’d been dreaming of, striving for, killing to achieve, it was all about to come true. Then the dining room doors flew open and three of his guards came sprinting in, breathing heavily. That was when his day began to crumble.

“L-Lord Dak’ruutha, the Heart, he’s been captured. His friends cut through the roof after the last markings were made, we could have never predicted—”

His pathetic scrambling was cut off by a wet thudding noise and a cough before he went silent. The guard reached a shaking hand up to the knife lodged in his throat, then went limp, crashing to the floor. The two guards by his side stood shaking at attention.

“Why,” Dak’ruutha said, eerily calm, “were there no guards stationed inside the room at all times  _ like I requested? _ ”

“My Lord, you told us to leave him alone—”

“I MEANT STOP TORTURING HIM SO HE DID NOT PERISH BEFORE THE RITUAL YOU BOTTOM FEEDING WORM,” Dak’ruutha barked, causing both his guards to flinch. Dak’ruutha felt every cell in his body begin to boil with rage. 

“I ap-pologize,” one of the guards said quietly. 

“Find him. I will not lose when we are this close.” Dak’ruutha responded, turning away. As angry as he was, he didn’t want to murder his entire workforce. One was enough for today. “Go tell the others that all efforts are to be directed towards finding the Heart, and be grateful that I spared your life after this insolence.”

The guards spun on their heels, fleeing from his presence like bats out of hell. Dak’ruutha also turned, walking over towards the altar room. The Heart would have been sitting atop the dazzling red altar, carved from rubies, within the hour. Dak’ruutha would have held his jaw open and poured the Heart Breaking Elixir into his mouth, and he would have been sent back to his precious Voltron with no more fuss. 

The ritual would have turned his blood into glass, and thanks to the traditional heart-shaped markings along his skin, the microscopic fibers of glass would have escaped into every nook and cranny of the Voltron base, infecting all those who worked with them. Then they, along with the Heart, would have turned to glass statues, shattering into beautiful ruby colored shapes. Voltron would be no longer, and he and the Galra could have formed an alliance to conquer the universe.

It would have been perfect.

“DAMN IT!” Dak’ruutha let out a guttural roar, throwing his armored fist into the nearest object, the altar. It did not break, crack, or even scratch. His fist ached, but he did not care. His little rebellion group didn’t have the space technology to follow them, he knew that. The Heart would be impossible to recapture. He hated to admit it, but it was the truth. 

After so much careful planning, Dak’ruutha had lost. 

  
  


The day and a half that Lance had spent inside the cryo pod was a day and a half spent on the floor next to it for Keith. Pidge and Hunk were Lance’s second most frequent visitors, they only left once to grab their pillows and blankets from their rooms. Third were Shiro, Allura, and Coran, who sat in the corner of the room and spoke in hushed voices, Allura sometimes dabbing her eyes with a delicate handkerchief. They encouraged Hunk and Pidge to come to the kitchen and eat something, but both had vehemently refused. They never once tried to speak to Keith.

He spent the entire time trying desperately to compose some sort of apology, but nothing seemed good enough for the horrible things Keith had done to get Lance in this place. The guilt and sadness was quite literally eating him up, his insides felt empty and stinging with a pain that was not from fatigue or hunger but something purely psychological. Pidge spent the entirety of Lance’s healing on the floor in front of him, sometimes typing lazily on her little computer, but mostly just gazing at him, an unreadable expression on her gaunt, tired face. Hunk was turned away from Keith for most of it, leaning against the side of Lance’s pod and running his hands through his hair every couple of seconds until it looked like a messy, afro-like version of itself. 

Time crept by like a snail, but sped like a racecar. It felt like and forever yet no time at all when the pod opened with a hiss, and Shiro darted from across the room to catch Lance’s body, still warming up from the cryo. Suddenly Keith’s throat constricted in panic. What would he say, what would he do? Would Lance hate him? Should Keith be doing something? The room was still as they watched Lance with tense anticipation.

Lance’s head lifted slowly from Shiro’s shoulder as Allura threw a large blanket over his shivering shoulders. His back was to Keith, and he could see white curling scars disappearing underneath the hem of the blanket as if they’d been there for years. Lance’s chocolate brown curls were tangled and messy, Keith wanted to stretch his hands out and smooth them down, caress Lance’s neck and hold him close, he wanted—

“Hi,” Lance said suddenly, and it was like someone broke a dam in the room, flooding it with motion and noise. Pidge threw herself at Lance, climbing up his side to dangle from his and Shiro’s shoulders in a hug. Hunk threw his arms around Allura and Coran, pushing them in to the group’s huddle. All of them were crying and shouting apologies and their gratitude for his safety. 

Keith watch this all from a distance, frozen in fear and shame. He didn’t deserve to be there with the rest of them, embracing their Heart. He was the one who ignored Red, he should’ve known better, he should’ve—

“Keith, stop thinking for two seconds and come hug me,” Lance’s voice cut through the commotion like a knife through water. The Blue Paladin was gazing at him with a kind intensity in his blue eyes, the kind that always inexplicably drew Keith in. There was a white scar across his face where the gash had been, but he looked no less beautiful from it. In fact, it seemed to make him even more breathtaking, if that was possible. It added a determined sort of strength to his aura that had Keith weak at the knees.

Keith was a weak man. 

So he walked forward and slipped into the embrace, the warmth and sniffles of his team surrounding him. Rather than feeling the intense shame he was expecting upon his reunion with Lance, he just feels incredible warmth and overwhelming love.

This was what it was to be in the presence of a heart. Without it everything had been cold and dark and dangerous. With Lance he was safe. He was warm. He was loved,  _ god  _ he was loved. It was overwhelming, the way it flooded through his body like liquid gold. 

Lance loved them, and Keith loved Lance.

He would never let his heart go again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, thank you for reading!! the meat of this story is over, but I'll probably add a fluffy epilogue sometime soon where we can finally give the Boys some Rest and Bonding. Does that sound cool? I wanted to add it into this chapter, but it was already over 10k so......  
> Thank you for all your support, kudos, and comments!! they give me life, I love you all so much. Thank you <3


	3. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the angst becomes fluff so fast it'll give you whiplash.  
> Here it is guys, the epilogue!! I hope you enjoy! Thank you endlessly for all the sweet comments, y'all are the best.

“Lance,” Pidge’s voice cut through his thoughts. He had just taken a deep, cleansing shower in his wonderful room that was nothing like the dreary, blood colored darkness of the room he’d been tortured in and was getting ready to head off to bed when the small girl approached him. She was in a pair of mint green pajamas, and her glasses had been removed, allowing him to get a full scope of the pain in her amber eyes. 

“Hey, Pidge, what are you doing still awake? Shiro told me you’ve been awake for like, three days straight. You really should be getting to bed,” he responded, hoping to coax a sleepy smile and maybe a yawn from the small girl. What he got instead was an alarmingly distraught sort of darkness that covered her face like a cloud over the sun. Her eyes glittered with tears and her lower lip started to tremble. Lance had never seen her cry as much as he had these past couple of days. 

“I just—” she managed to choke out, before bursting into tears. She threw her arms around his middle and sobbed into his pajama shirt, and Lance immediately went into Big Brother mode, dropping to his knees and pulling her down with him onto the floor of the castle ship hallway so it was easier to return the embrace. 

“I j-just wanted to say I’m  _ s-s-so sorry,  _ Lance, I love you s-so much, you’re l-l-like a big b-brother to me and I—”

“Shh,” Lance said softly, petting her hair. He felt his own throat grow tight with tears threatening to burst past his strong resolve. “It’s alright, I understand that you all were busy with other things, it’s no one’s fault that I just happened to fall behind.” Pidge shook her head vehemently against his chest before pulling back to look at him, a wild sort of desperation crossing her face. 

“No! That’s not—it isn’t an excuse. We never—we shouldn’t—” she sighed a deep, shuddering sigh, “You don’t deserve to be a second priority. We should have noticed when you weren’t in Red right away.”

Lance stiffened at that. So it was true. They  _ had  _ forgotten him. He’d been desperately praying and hoping that the rebel soldier was wrong, that his team just didn’t have the time to grab him when he fell behind but that they were worrying about him all the way back to the Castle. But no, according to Pidge’s teary apology, they must’ve spent the whole ride back to the castle high-fiving each other and congratulating themselves on a job well done. 

All while Lance was being pounced on by five different rebels, dragged kicking and screaming back to the presence of Dak’ruutha who gave him a speech about some stupid ritual involving hearts and blood plagues before the masked alien excused himself to make a call. 

A call to the castle, bragging about his victory. 

A call that would  _ finally  _ alert his team of his disappearance. 

A call that was nearly a varga after their takeoff without Lance. 

“Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my fucked up lifetime,” Lance said, shaking away the bitter thoughts. No, he had to focus on Pidge right now. There was no use making her feel worse by making a big deal out of it. “It’s that you can’t change the past. All we can do is look forwards into the future. So try not to beat yourself up about it too much, and focus on uh, not doing that anymore.” 

Pidge let out a self deprecating chuckle, and Lance pulled her head into his chest again for a bone crushing hug before lifting her up with him to standing. 

“Come on, Pidgeon. Let’s get you to bed.”

As Lance bid the girl farewell at her door, she squeezed his middle one last time for a quick hug.

“I love you so much, Lance,” she whispered, not trusting her voice to refrain from bursting back into more tears. 

“Love you too, Pidge.” Lance responded, and as the doors slid shut, he finally allowed himself to cry. 

  
  


The next day was full of much of the same; each teammate took their turns approaching Lance and apologizing through tears for forgetting about him. Not even their sturdy head, Shiro, was spared from the water works as he gripped Lance around the shoulders in an embrace that stole Lance’s breath away. 

Each apology was different, but they all had the same effect to Lance’s emotional state. Every “I’m sorry,” just drove home the knowledge that  _ yes, my team forgot about me.  _ It was like every word from his friends was just another nail in his heart’s coffin. Sure, he loved that they were sorry, and they felt guilty for it, but still. It happened. And damn if that didn’t make Lance feel like absolute shit. 

By the time Keith was asking to talk to him alone after dinner for what would surely be just another reason for Lance to tear himself up at night, he was feeling so emotionally broken that he just felt hollow. They agreed to meet in Lance’s room, but he was starting to wish that they’d picked Keith’s—that way Lance would have a retreat option. Instead, he stood facing a worn-out looking Keith as he wrung his hands and bit his lip, probably imagining every word he wanted to say so elaborately that the thoughts turned into knots. 

“Lance, I just wanted to—” Keith finally started, but Lance stared at him blankly, looking more tired than the Blue Paladin ever had. 

“Apologize for forgetting me?” Lance finished for him, his voice quiet and croaky. “Because It’s okay, everyone already said it.” He didn’t  _ want  _ to be a dick, but he just couldn’t bear to hear it one more time.  _ Forget. Forget. Forget.  _

“Lance,” Keith said brokenly, but the Blue Paladin ignored him. 

“I just want to know  _ why, _ ” Lance said, dropping his gaze to the floor. “I mean, I know that you guys sometimes start training or eat breakfast without me, and I get it, we’re busy with the weight of a war on our shoulders, but why  _ me? _ ” 

Keith stood frozen, each word stabbing into him like a sharpened icicle. 

“I’ve noticed, you know. Everyone else is too good to be forgotten. Remember that time a few movements ago when we were all just sitting in the break area together, like we weren’t even  _ doing  _ anything, but Hunk was in the kitchen and everyone started wondering where he was. If Hunk’s absence is noticed when everyone’s doing something as simple as  _ sitting  _ in the same  _ room,  _ why isn’t my absence noticed when fleeing a planet through the thick of battle? I don’t know about you, Keith, but the stakes on those two feel pretty different to me.” Lance didn’t want it to happen this way, he just wanted to listen to Keith’s apology like everyone else’s and give him a hug then go to bed. But he was on a roll, and it was too late to stop him now. 

“I wonder how long I would’ve been there if Dak’ruutha hadn’t given you guys a call to brag. I can’t believe I’d ever be  _ thanking  _ that bastard, but here I am.” Lance finished bitterly, and Keith flinched. Lance immediately regretted opening his mouth. “Wait, that was unfair of me, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“Lance,” Keith repeated, and his voice broke halfway through.

“Forget I said anything,”  _ Forget. Forget. Forget.  _ Lance’s life was full of  _ forget.  _

“You know I can’t do that,” Keith whispered. Lance’s eyes were downcast, so he didn’t see it coming when Keith reached out, pressing a gloved palm against the back of his neck. Lance’s head whipped up, but Keith wasn’t looking at his eyes. He seemed to be fixated on his own hand, rubbing back and forth across Lance’s neck. What was he  _ doing?  _

“Why not?” Lance asked, but his voice shook—Keith’s warm hand sent shivers down his spine. He refrained from adding the fact that he never seemed to have any trouble forgetting Lance before, take the day they’d rescued Shiro for example. Of course, in the months he and Keith spent together on the ship, becoming less of rivals and more of friends, Keith told him that he’d never actually forgotten Lance, he’d just panicked because of how different he looked from when they were kids. He’d never elaborated further than that, but blushed profusely whenever Lance tried to bring it up. Still, Lance was in a bitter mood. He’d stew in his bitter thoughts. Keith’s hand was making it awfully hard to be bitter, though. It was sort of melting him into mush for some reason. 

Keith breathed in deeply, his eyes were unfocused as he stared blankly at his hand, thoughts clearly elsewhere. Then he slowly leaned forwards, dropping his head against Lance’s shoulder with a  _ thud.  _ Lance stayed still as Keith’s other arm snaked around his neck, pushing his weight into Lance as if he couldn’t stand on his own. He let out a shaky sigh, the warm air against his collar raising goosebumps on Lance’s arms. His hand still traced something on Lance’s neck, sometimes dipping down past his shirt onto his upper back right on top of—

Oh.

He was tracing the scars.

Lance knew they were there, he’d had plenty of time looking at them in the mirror with a disconnected sort of hollowness in his gut. They didn’t seem real, having healed in the pod into an ageless perfection. He hated that he was already sort of used to them. 

“I hate this,” Keith muttered against Lance. The taller boy chuckled grimly.

“What about this do you have to hate?” he asked. Keith shrugged, Lance could feel the motion against his body as if it was his own.

“Myself,” the Red paladin said simply, as if it were the plainest truth in the universe—right up there with two plus two is four, Dak’ruutha is a superbitch, Hunk’s eyes are brown. Just facts. “It’s my fault, y’know.” Lance rolled his eyes, finally allowing himself to wrap Keith up in his own arms. The Red paladin just grew more limp against him.

“Oh, please. You don’t even—” Lance started, but Keith suddenly squeezed him so tight his breath got caught in his throat. 

“No,” he growled, “it’s true. Red tried to tell me, but I ignored her. I thought she was just pissed about leaving the other lions behind, but in reality she was telling— _ begging  _ me to save you. And I didn’t.” Keith took a shuddering breath, and dampness appeared on Lance’s shoulder. Was Keith… crying? “I did this,” he sobbed. Lance’s heart clenched. Keith genuinely thought that the  _ entire thing  _ was because of him. Oh, how it must’ve been plaguing him these past couple days, every sight of Lance just reminding him of something that wasn’t true. Every glance at the scars— _ oh, the scars— _ must’ve torn him up into shreds.

“Oh, no, Keith,” Lance cooed, curling his arms around the boy snugly, petting his hair and rubbing his ribcage soothingly. All thoughts of bitterness melted away with each spasm of Keith’s chest, pressed against Lance’s own. He may have forgotten Lance, but it wasn’t his fault. And besides, how could he feel anything but warmth for Keith when the guy had practically  _ married  _ him in the weeks leading up to the Sh’kiv mission—the pair of them sparring and talking and laughing and bickering with each other like longtime besties. Sometimes it felt like they’d known each other their entire lives. It was hard to imagine a time when Lance distrusted and disliked him so much that he could barely stand doing the  _ maze  _ with him. 

So Lance channeled every last bit of love he had in his heart into the embrace, surprised to find himself, for the first time since his rescue,  _ enjoying  _ being cried on by one of his teammates. Besides, since when did Keith  _ cry _ ? The only other times Lance had seen him cry was the two times he’d been drunk off alien liquor they’d stolen from one of the paladin banquets (Keith was a  _ lightweight  _ and it was the funniest damn thing Lance had ever seen). The paladins had started giggling about something, and soon enough there were giddy tears leaking from Keith’s violet eyes. Lance had been awestruck. The other time they’d gotten drunk enough for the Red paladin to cry, they’d been playing drunken truth or dare and Keith revealed that he had a large affinity for chameleons. 

“They’re just so cute,” Keith had babbled as the other paladins watched with glossy eyes, “with their tiny hands, they look like—” he’d shuddered, wiping his eyes with his fingers— “THEY LOOK LIKE MITTENS!” Then he’d broken down into unintelligible sobbing, opening and closing his hands in what Lance could only assume was an impression of a chameleon’s closing over a branch. It was cute enough to nearly give Lance a heart attack. 

This was not cute. This was extremely heartbreaking. Lance wanted it to stop, immediately. “Keith, don’t say that. You know I don’t blame you. There’s no way you could’ve known.”

“I should’ve noticed the  _ s-second  _ you weren’t there,” Keith moaned pitifully, arms tightening even more around Lance if it was possible. “I thought I loved you too much to let you go.” Lance’s heart melted. As much as he might wish for it to be otherwise, this purely platonic love Keith had for Lance was definitely one of the best things to happen to him in space. Lance had realized long ago that he was falling for Keith, even back when they were still “rivals,” but after he got over his distrust. This was more than anything Lance could’ve hoped for—it was a friendship. So he sighed and dropped his head down into Keith’s neck, breathing him in.

“Love you too, bro,” he said. Keith seemed to still at this. He shook his head against Lance’s shoulder.

“No, I mean, I  _ love you  _ Lance,” he gasped, “which is what makes it j-just  _ so much w-worse,  _ I  _ left you, _ ” Keith babbled, but Lance’s attention was rather fixated on the first part.

“Like, as more than friends?” he asked quietly. “You love me?”

Lance is sure that had Keith been even a fraction more composed than he was, he would’ve never admitted it. But since he was already so emotionally distraught, clinging to Lance like a lifeline, it apparently made him more vulnerable to the truth. So he nodded.

“Yeah, I love you Lance.” It was entirely inappropriate for the emotional moment they were having, but Lance felt his face split into an uncontrollable grin. He pulled back, forcing Keith away from his body to be held at arm’s length.

“Do you wanna stay here for the night?” Lance asked brightly. Keith blinked owlishly in response.

“What?” he croaked, and  _ shit  _ he looked awful—Lance was just noticing the dark circles under his glittering, bloodshot eyes; the sallow paleness to his already porcelain skin. Lance’s smile softened into something more empathetic. 

“I think it goes without saying that I feel the same way,” he said. Keith’s eyes widened marginally, but doubt and sadness and guilt still flickered across his face. “So do you want to stay here and cuddle tonight? You obviously need it and I’ve been wanting it since our first accidental sleepover. What do you think?”

“I—uh, wait—what?” Keith stammered, rubbing his eyes. Lance made an expasperated noise in the back of his throat, threading an arm around Keith’s shoulders and pulling him towards his closet. 

“Listen Mullet. We can go over how this was  _ definitely not your fault  _ and you’re a  _ fucking idiot  _ for letting yourself think otherwise in the morning. Tonight, however, I’ve got a cute, undoubtedly touch-starved boy in my bedroom with ‘snuggle me’ written all over him, and I plan on doing just that. Would you like the white pajama shirt or the black one?” Lance rattled off, already pulling the soft black tee shirt off one of the hooks and handing it to the dumbstruck paladin standing just behind him. He then shrugged his jacket off and yanked his day shirt over his head, dropping them both in a pile on the floor. 

“Go on, get dressed,” Lance nudged Keith with his elbow as he leaned over and pulled the other shirt down from its hook. He didn’t look back as he unzipped his jeans and dropped them into the pile of clothes on the floor, leaving him in only his boxers and the oversized tee shirt, instead choosing to trust the sounds of rustling fabric behind him as an indicator that no matter how dazed, Keith was following suit. 

When Lance  _ did  _ turn around, however, he was absolutely  _ not  _ prepared for the sight in front of him. Who knew that edgy, grouchy Keith could look so…  _ soft?  _ His eyes were puffy from the crying, his cheeks flushed and his nose cherry red. The shirt Lance had given him slipped down on one side, revealing ample amounts of sweet, pale collarbone, and he was wearing ordinary plaid boxers that barely peeked out from the hem of Lance’s shirt. His torso was obviously shorter than Lance’s, but  _ god,  _ it looked like a  _ dress  _ on him. 

“What is it?” Keith said irritably, his voice still scratchy. Lance realized with a start that he’d been staring. He shook his head absently.

“N-nothing, you’re just really cute,” he said, and to his absolute  _ delight,  _ the raven-haired boy’s face bloomed crimson. So he blushed easily, good to know. 

“This abrupt change in atmosphere is giving me whiplash,” Keith said grumpily, but Lance ignored him, grabbing his hand and pulling him over to his bed. He still hadn’t brushed his teeth nor washed his face, but he supposed he could go  _ one  _ day without his precious regimen if it meant getting Keith into his bed  _ immediately.  _

“Come on, Mullet, I’m tired. Let’s just talk in the morning,” Lance climbed into the bed, pulling the covers up over his legs and drawing Keith in after him, their fingers intertwined. Keith settled—albeit stiffly—so he was facing away from Lance on the very edge of the bed, which just would  _ not  _ do, Lance thought. He huffed exasperatedly and snaked one arm underneath Keith’s head, the other looped around his waist. He pulled Keith’s body closer to his own until he was completely spooning the other boy, who was still stiff as a board.

“I don’t—” Keith tried to say, but Lance shushed him.

“What did I just say, Keith? I’m  _ tired  _ and we can talk about it in the  _ morning, _ ” he huffed. 

Keith tensed as if he was preparing to say something more, but Lance dropped the hand around Keith’s torso down to run his thumb over the distinct ridges of his ribs in a soothing gesture he knew would have Keith relaxing instantly. 

And relax he did. The shift in posture was dramatic as the tension in his shoulders fell away and he leaned slightly back, pushing against Lance endearingly. 

“Okay,” Keith breathed lazily. He was already getting sleepy, it seemed. And as much as Lance wanted to relish in this cozy, cuddly version of Keith in  _ his pajamas holy fuck he’s so cute— _ the events of the day were quickly catching up to him. So he let his eyes flutter shut as he buried his nose into Keith’s unfairly soft hair, and slipped into unconsciousness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry if it was sort of rushed, but my friend mentioned how funny it would be if Keith just suddenly broke down and Lance was like "cuddle time. now." so that's what i did lol.
> 
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> http://wesurecara.tumblr.com/
> 
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> https://ko-fi.com/wecara

**Author's Note:**

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